Hours: Monday-Friday 8:00 am – 5:00 pm

Please let us know if you are unable to come to our office during our regular business hours and we will be happy to make arrangements in order to best assist you.

Please contact Forrest Baggarly, CMCA, AMS to assist you with this matter.

Please see a full list of locations at Contact Us

Late fees are changed per your Assoc. bylaws and budget. Blackstone Management does not assess late fees to any Assoc. it is done by the board of directors for your community.

Please note the below:

1. Late fees collected are paid the community and not Blackstone Management.
2. All (Check, Money Order, Cashier Checks, Credit Cards) Payments are processed with 24 hours of being received by our payment center. No payments are held for any reason.
3. Late fees are changed to any account with a balance

Electronic payments sent by your financial institution (bank) are not digitally sent, a check is mailed on your behalf to our payment center. Note: the delivery date provided by your bank is an estimate and does not represent the actual delivery date by the USPS

Many of our communities now have interactive websites. If you are a resident of one of the communities utilizing this service we offer, you can now reserve and rent your neighborhood’s community center online through your Community Resource Center by utilizing your community website login. You may also make this request using the Blackstone Management app or visit the booking center

Please send your written dispute to info@blackstoneam.com.

For more information, please visit the Inspector’s Desk

Visit your community portal to learn about Assessment due dates and amounts

Yes. Visit login to your community portal.

Once an account is referred to the attorney Blackstone Management is unable to discuss the account with anyone, this is a directive from the association’s Board of Directors. Once the account has been referred to the attorney all communication will take place between the attorney and the homeowner. The attorney will contact us directly if they require clarification or additional information. By visiting the client section of our webpage and clicking on your community, you can find contact information for your association’s attorney. Feel free to call our office at (240) 349-2117 to ask a Customer Service representative for help finding attorney contact information for your association.

Learn more about your community

Yes. If you are unable to pay your assessment on time please request a payment plan, once requested the board for your community will review and if approved a copy of the plan and payment instructions will be mailed to you.

Request a Payment Plan Here

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If you are selling your home, state law requires the Seller to provide a resale package to the Purchaser, before, on, or within 20 days of entering into a sales contract. If you live in a townhome community, your property may belong to 2 homeowners associations, the townhomes association and the master association, and you must provide the Purchaser a legal Resale Package for both the townhome association and the master association. Please ensure that you obtain a Resale Package for each association accordingly.

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A flag lot is an irregularly shaped building lot or parcel that has a very limited amount of street or road frontage. It is skinny like the flag pole. Then the wider part of the lot, the flag in this analogy, is back further away from the road frontage.

We have taken the liberty of adding a sketch here, even though usually it is the site visitor who adds the photo. In this case the picture really helps explain this idea.

Usually the narrow part of the lot fronting on the road consists entirely or primarily of a driveway. The flag lot was invented because of the need to get to parcels that were not part of any lot that has street frontage.

A flag lot could and often does pertain to a commercial or industrial district as well, by the way.

Many subdivision regulations prohibit flag lots. In residential areas the rationale for this would be the desire for some degree of uniformity in the building setback line. This tends to create a nicer looking neighborhood in the minds of many people. More importantly to a city government perhaps, flag lots can be mighty confusing to police, fire, garbage collection, or other city services. Utility lines so far tend to be linear, and so if the backs of lots are not somewhat uniform, utility location and servicing tends to become more tricky.

You ask if a flag lot is bad. We would have to say not always. If your zoning board is reviewing a prospective new subdivision or planned development, by all means avoid flag lots for all the reasons implied above. It is better practice to prohibit all flag lots in your regulations than to disapprove of them on a case by case basis.

When reviewing various items that might come up regarding older lots, such as lot splits or lot mergers, you will need to evaluate the context. A flag lot tends to work out much better in a rural area than in suburbs or urban areas. If the area once was rural, and now is becoming part of an exurban and suburban area though, you might want to take the opportunity to question what would happen if you take the action most likely to result in the disappearance of the flag lot situation.

You might ask how a planning board could encourage or cause the flag lot to disappear. That is likely to be extremely tough politically. Depending on your state, the city council may be the ultimate authority and the ones who take the legally binding vote on a matter relevant to a flag lot, and it would be hard for them to do this.

In other states though the planning commission or even the city staff have the ultimate authority over minor subdivisions, as they are often called, or over lot splits or combinations. The land in a flag lot really should be split up and added to the adjacent lots if you see the opportunity to do so because all land owners will be comfortable with that action. This is somewhat unlikely, we have to admit. This action would work best when the rear line of the flag lot is even with the rear lines of the adjoining lots to the right and left.

That might be hard to visualize, so think of it this way. The flag lot may have been created in the first place because one of the owners of the land to the right and left of the flag lot decided to sell part of their land. That owner then was told that the driveway needed to be part of the new lot, rather than an access easement over the land that the owner was keeping. So in this scenario, the flag lot once was part of an adjoining lot anyway.

In the case of a flag lot on commercially or industrially zoned land, we tend to be a bit more tolerant if lot sizes are irregular anyway. Each case then should be evaluated on the basis of whether the flag pole part of the lot provides adequate and safe access for vehicles, whether any utilities or emergency services are inconvenienced by the existence of the flag lot, and whether it is practical to combine the flag lot with one of its adjacent lots or to split it in some way between the adjacent owners.

In sum, a flag lot is far from the worst thing you could allow in your city, but certainly we hope you do not participate in creating any new ones. There is one exception. We do think that a flag lot is preferable to having a lot where the only access is by way of easement over a neighbor’s property. So if you have a chance to prevent future conflict due to an encroachment over or very near to an easement, and the only way to eliminate the necessity of the easement is through creating a flag lot, feel free to allow that.

When buying or selling a home, it is expected that all sorts of fees will pop up at closing.  However, the HOA transfer fee is one that sometimes takes people by surprise.  This is a one-time fee that occurs when a property is transferred from one owner to another.  The HOA transfer fee is mandated by the HOA and isn’t always listed in the real estate contract because it is a non-negotiable fee, meaning that the buyer can’t negotiate the amount with the seller.

However, it is generally considered the responsibility of the seller or buyer to contact the HOA to find out about the transfer fees that will be charged.  To learn more about the fee, what it covers, and who is responsible for payment, read on.

What does the transfer fee cover?

The HOA transfer fee covers all costs that the HOA will incur when transferring the ownership records from the seller to the buyer.  These are charges associated with preparing and distributing documents, updating names in databases, changing security codes and amenities passes, and other administrative costs. This fee also covers the welcome letter that is provided to each new property owner to give them all of the information needed when joining the Association.

How much is the transfer fee?

HOA transfer fees are generally in the $100-$250 range but vary from place to place.  There is nothing legally mandated regarding the dollar amount that can be charged in most states,

Who is responsible for paying the transfer fee?

An HOA is required to disclose the transfer fees to all parties prior to the sale, but the sellers are generally responsible for paying the transfer fee.  That being said, there is no hard-fast rule about who is responsible.  Home purchase contracts should clearly state who is responsible for paying the HOA transfer fees.  Though the dollar amount of the transfer fee is non-negotiable, a potential buyer can include a clause in their offer requesting that the seller pays all fees.  The seller can counter with a set dollar amount that will be put towards HOA fees, leaving the buyer responsible for anything above that amount.  The HOA transfer fee is almost always paid at the time of closing so the HOA shouldn’t run into problems with the fee being left unpaid.  However, in the rare event that the fee is left unpaid, the HOA can work with the new owner to consult the sales contract to determine who should be held responsible and proceed from there.

The HOA transfer fee isn’t a very large fee, but it is necessary to cover the expenses incurred when transferring ownership from one owner to another.

For additional assistance managing your HOA community, or for general HOA management questions, contact Blackstone Management today and see what makes us refreshingly different.